Singer/songwriter and all round thoughtful soul Kat Flint talks to maddog about the differences between the music scene in Edinburgh and London, her strategies for self funding her records and that strange gig she played last Christmas…

MD: So, you grew up in Scotland but now you live in London?

Kat Flint: I grew up in the North East of Scotland and I was in a band for a while in Edinburgh. The music scene is very different in London from the one in Scotland – it’s a lot more competitive, where as Edinburgh is much more of a community. You see the same people in the same venues night after night and it was quite a nice group of people to play with because there was lots of collaboration going on. People would play on each other’s records and set up nights together. Although that makes it sound like that doesn’t happen in London and it does, but it’s harder to find those people in the first place.

MD: Your album was funded by your fans. How did that happen?

KF: I had a little label lined up that was going to help out with the funding but they got into a bit of difficulty, the music industry being what it is, so that funding fell through and I’d already booked the recording time with a friend of mine who was coming over from America. I was thinking ‘Shit, I don’t have any money to pay him now!’ so I put out a plea for help on Myspace and set up a Paypal account and told people about it at gigs. They gave a lot more than I thought they would. I was thinking that I’d get maybe two hundred quid and it might pay a small portion of this guy's plane fair but I actually got a few thousand pounds, which covered the whole thing.

MD: Would you advise this to other bands as a way to fund an album?

KF: I think it’s always worth a go. You have to get a momentum behind it and you have to have a fan base you can call upon. I started trying to make music at the time when MySpace caught on - you get into this way of communicating where fans kind of become your friends, and that makes them a lot more willing to help you out because they’ve heard all the trials and tribulations you’ve gone through. I sent out demo CDs to people for free right from the word go, so there were a lot of people who’d had things from me who then returned the favour.

MD: What have you got coming up on the gig front?

KF: I’ve started work on the next album so I’m taking a wee break from gigs. I’m locking myself away so that I can actually get the second album done. I need to find the funding some how over the next twelve months. This time, I might just rob a bank!

MD: What can we expect from the new record?

KF: It’s going to be a bit darker, and a bit folkier. I’ve been listening a lot to proper traditional folk. I’m trying to find a fiddle player and an accordion player. Without making it old fashioned, I want to bring those influences in. There’s a whole other conflicting set of influences like folktronica. I really love James Yuill's stuff and I think he does some very clever things. I’m not going to steal his ideas but I like the idea of layering organic sounds and repeating them over an acoustic song. There’s going to be lots of experimenting and I’m going to see what comes out of it.

MD: So who are your favourite bands at the moment?

KF: There are a couple of contemporary folk people that I’ve been listening to recently. There’s a band called Lau, a folk trio that I played a gig with in Aberdeen. They take the traditional thing and put it into crazy jazz chords and take it off in lots of unexpected directions. Also, people like Rachel Unthank, Mystery Jets and Battles.

MD: There are a lot of solo artists that are looking to be really big this year, for example, Esser, Dan Black, Lady Gaga etc. Do you think 2009 will be a good year for you?

KF: No probably not! Every year is declared the year of the songwriter. There are so many different types of solo songwriters, and I think it will be a good year for some of them. I don’t think I’m ever going to be part of the mainstream so it’s not really that much of an issue.

MD: Would you prefer a number one album or a really cult smaller group of fans?

KF: Cult group of smaller devoted fans. I’d like to influence a few people who really get it and they’ll remember it in twenty years time and play it to their kids, because there’s a song that they connect with. There’s something a lot more meaningful about that then selling a lot of records.

MD: What gigs have you played recently?

KF: I played an amazing gig before Christmas at the Union Chapel in Highbury. There was a band called Revere who are a big post-rock orchestra and this girl and her band called Gabby Young and Other Animals who do cabaret-burlesque-jazz. It was Christmas time so we had candles and choirs and we had to play a carol in each set. It’s not always the big ones I love – sometimes it’s the weird ones. There was one on a boat down the Thames playing throughout the night. You could see the water rising through the window. I kept thinking the boat was sinking.

MD: Is 'Christopher, you’re a soldier now' about anyone in particular?

KF: It’s about my little brother. He had an undecided period about what he was going to do with his life and then he ended up signing himself up for the Navy. I was getting really really worried with the situation in Iraq kicking off and I was thinking 'Shit, my brother’s going to have to go and kill people!' He didn’t go in the end because he got a girlfriend and he couldn’t leave her behind!

MD: What are your thoughts about Barrack Obama taking the troops out in 2010?

KF: It’s a tough one. I’m not particularly well read on it and I don’t claim to be. I think we went in and made a mess and I think the right time to come out is when the mess is sorted. If we’ve managed to improve the situation by then, by all means bring them out, but it seems very irresponsible to go in and interfere with another country and then bugger off when it gets bad.

Words > Anna Dobbie
Photos > www.caerphoto.com